Good news: I did manage to bike to work at least once during Bike to Work Week, and that was this morning. Monday was rainy and yesterday was freezing, but today I woke up to sunshine and a phone call from Hardingfele: "Ready to bike?" So we boke to work! (Richard Bonomo insists the verb to bike is conjugated like this: bike, boke, boken. Makes sense to me.)
Emotional maturity has always been a fascinating topic for me, since unlike most people I have been able to watch mine unfold. The average person started maturing emotionally the day he was born, so the process is probably lost to the fuzzy recesses of childhood memory. (With the exception of Rich, who insists he has prenatal memories.) However, I had no emotional development whatsoever until taking a medication for Attention Deficit Disorder, which must have flipped some kind of switch in my brain. Another thing it did was give me depth perception, which I had never had before; when people used to talk about 3-D movies, I had no idea what they were talking about, since to me the movies were no different than real life: flat.
Since the clock started somewhat later for me, and things seem to be unfolding in real time, that means that I went through the stages of emotional development when I was old enough to remember, if not understand. (It took me quite awhile to figure out what was going on!) At this point I am in my late teens emotionally, which means I don't stand out much from my peers. Back when I was in my early twenties with all the emotional maturity of a toddler, that was definitely annoying to people! I can illustrate with a simple example:
Say a friend (I'll pick on Tiffy) is walking through the woods with me in the spring. First she will take a walk with pre-maturity me. We see some pretty white flowers, and she says, "Those are trilliums. My sister has them near her house." The fact of the matter is that they are May apples. The pre-maturity me would think only of how she had the facts wrong.
Pre-Mature Me: "No, those are May apples." (in a matter-of-fact tone of voice that probably comes across as snotty)
Would this response please anyone? I think not. Tiffy put up with a lot of that from me back in the day, but it drove everyone else crazy, and I was not what you would call popular. Then the maturing process began, and had the scenario happened when I was at the emotional age of twelve, I would have weighed the importance of the facts against Tiffy's feelings and tried to compromise by striking a conciliatory tone:
Half Mature Me: "I think maybe, and I could be wrong, but those could be May apples." (in a highly apologetic tone of voice)
Is this any improvement? Undoubtedly, yes, but it makes me sound weak and vacillating. If this exchange happened today I would weigh the possibility of Tiffy's future embarrassment at misidentifying May apples against the present reality of embarrassing her over her mistake, and I would probably conclude that on the grand scale of things, this is a highly unimportant matter. After all, trilliums do look quite a bit like May apples, and the likelihood that she would later embarrass herself at a cocktail party in front of the company president is slim to none. Now I would probably offer a noncommittal answer along these lines:
Mature Me: "They sure are beautiful." (in an admiring tone of voice)
There. That doesn't say I agree with her, so if she knows me well (as Tiffy does), it opens up the possibility for her to ask me what I think they are. (In matters botanical, Tiffy almost always defers to me.) However, if she doesn't notice that I have not backed up her identification of the flowers, all she hears is an agreeable statement from me that the flowers in question are lovely.
While this may not be the most mature tack (after all, I'm only at prom age, not voting age emotionally), I certainly think it is an improvement, and I have noticed a difference in the reactions of the people around me. What I really wish is that everyone who has the same deficits I had could also have that switch flipped. It is very difficult being the girl in Scenario #1 who simply gives what she views as a factual answer and then cannot understand why others dislike her so intensely.
So if any neuroscientists are reading this blog, get cracking on that already, would you?
Famous Hat
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Gosh, then I am at the toddler stage, because I will most certainly correct a person if a fact is wrong, especially if a plant is misidentified. One can correct politely and graciously, but still let the correct fact stand. Why perpetuate a botanical falsehood.
The word to type in for verification is Trine, which is actually a Norwegian name. Go figure.
Actually, I have no pre-natal memories. I DO have audio-visual memories that appear to go back to within about 6 months of birth, and I do have a tactile memory or two that go back further, but nothing pre-natal.
In my case, I would probably say something truly annoying, such as: "I THINK those might be may apples, and the plural of 'trillium' would be 'trillia' (harumph!)." What does that make me, besides a nerd?
Hey, I wasn't trying to comment on anyone else's emotional maturity, just my own. And as I noted, mine is not quite complete yet. It's not that correcting someone is wrong, I was just talking about my motivations for the way I did it, how more and more it took the other person into consideration.
Post a Comment